Closing the gap between enterprise models and service-oriented architectures

Abstract

In 2005, four German universities created a research program to improve and standardize their administrative processes. Therefore, reams of processes were analyzed and core functions identified. As a result, automatable core functions have been implemented as web-services using the service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm. To facilitate reuse, this functionality has been documented using a service catalog. However, the real advantage of SOA does not evolve until these services become configurable at the business level. We introduce a modeling grammar to model service function interfaces and standardized business object types allowing the redesign of enterprise systems functionalities at the business level. We illustrate the usefulness of our approach with a pilot study conducted at the University of Munster (Germany). © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008.